SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/13/2017
8:59 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-4 “The Setting of this Prayer”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 17:1a
Message of the
verse: “1 Jesus spoke these things;
and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, "Father, the hour has come;”
We have been talking about the statement “Father, the
hour has come,” and what I want to do in this section is give a rather large
quote from John MacArthur as he concludes this section we have been looking at
for four days. I may have a comment or
two after this quote.
“The unfolding drama of redemptive history had reached
its apex. Plans made in eternity past
were finding their culmination in time. The
hour had come in which the Son of Man would offer Himself as the perfect and
only atoning sacrifice for sin. The hour
had come when the sinless One would be made sin for believers that they ‘might
become the righteousness of God in Him’ (2 Cor. 5:21). The hour had come when Christ would cancel ‘the
certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us’
taking ‘it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross (Col. 2:14). This was the hour when the Old Testament
prophecies of Messiah’s death would be fulfilled; when the serpent’s head would
be bruised (Gen. 3:15); when the suffering Servant, ‘a man of sorrows and
acquainted with grief’ (Isa. 53:3), would be ‘pierced through for our transgressions…crushed
for our iniquities’ and have ‘the chastening for our well-being [fall] upon Him
[so that] by His scourging were healed’ (v. 5).
It was the hour when the shadows of the Old Testament sacrifices (cf.
Heb. 10:1) would give way to the glorious reality of the final sacrifice—the Lamb
of God (John 1:29; Heb. 10:14). It was the
hour of Christ’s triumph over the prince of this world and the kingdom of
darkness (John 12:31; 16:11; Col. 2:14; Heb. 2:14). It was the climactic hour when God through
Christ’s sacrifice, would defeat sin, death, and Satan, and redeem a people for
Himself.
“With the hour of supreme suffering and even greater
victory at hand, and with His terrified and heartbroken disciples still
surrounding Him (cf. 18:1), the Lord lifted His eyes to heaven and prayed. Though the words of this prayer would be
magnificent in any context, the palpable imminence of the cross makes Christ’s
plea as poignant as it is profound.”
The only thing that I want to add is that when we see the
word “hour” or “day” in the Scriptures we cannot always understand it to mean
60 minutes in the case of an hour or 24 hours in the case of a day. Jesus would soon fulfill all of the Old
Testament prophecies that were written about Him, but it would be a little more
than an hour but I think it is understandable to us what this means.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: It has been
mentioned that all the things that took place during the “hour” that is spoken
about here was planned in eternity past and then prophesied in the Old
Testament, and for me to think that the Lord was actually thinking about me in
eternity past and also in this prayer that Jesus is praying to His Father is mindboggling
to me.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
I desire to be thankful for the truth
that I have is seen here.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Andrew” (John 6:9).
Today’s Bible
question: “Where was Joseph sent when he
refused to sin?”
Answer in our next SD.
2/13/2017 9:20 AM
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